Bookslut

August 2008

"If thereís a magic pony in the story, chances are Iíll read it. I feel like I write about magic ponies a lot. Part of that is what keeps me interested, but also that I have a hard time telling the stories or, not so much the stories, but the sort of emotional transformations that occur to me, as possible and interesting to describe. I always have a much easier time with the help of a magic pony or a crabby angel or a ghost of a suicide or whatever."
by
Drew Nellins

Errol Morris handed over his tapes and transcripts to Gourevitch and then Gourevitch, with help from Morris, produced this book. Itís this last fact Iím having a hard time getting over. With the moral and ethical calculus worked out ahead of time by Morris, it seems that Gourevitch simply had to cut and paste relevant lines from the transcripts into a Word document. What results is a story expertly told -- if youíre only going to read one book on Abu Ghraib, then this is it -- but one that feels surprisingly hollow.
by
David Griffith

"But as for trying to tell stories that have gone untold... thatís what Iíve been trying to do all along, and certainly with my first two novels. America has a very uncomfortable relationship with its soldiers, especially its young enlisted soldiers. As a country we love to wave the flag and yell rah-rah, but relatively few really know who it is who wears the uniform, and what those people are really like, and why theyíre in the uniform to begin with."
by
Jen Crispin

This latter breed of sensational Prozac Lit sometimes plants itself squarely in one camp or the other -- celebrating or reviling SSRIs (Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors) like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft -- but many are smugly centrist. Reading these books is, well, depressing. The pro- and anti-pill screeds are innocuous. Itís the earnest, aw-shucks accounts of how ďantidepressants are sometimes misused, but theyíve also have helped millions of peopleĒ that cloy. In a lot of Prozac Lit favorites, the systems that govern how drugs are created, how theyíre tested and how they reach the public go unexamined.
by
Elizabeth Bachner

Another book to tell about what women want, and another male to tell it. If Island Pressís marketing crew inserted the what women want phrase in Moreís subtitle to boost sales the cute way, let me tell them, itís more wearying than witty, more off-putting than playful. Letís lose the essentialism already. Who thinks anymore in terms of women Ė or men or gays or Republicans or Muslims -- as a demographic with cookie-cutter-designed desires?
by
Barbara J. King

Robert McDonald said of a shift in peopleís interest in reading, ďAsking a bookseller if they see a decline in reading is like asking a baker if they see a decline in the interest in pies -- we are surrounded at all times by colleagues, friends, and customers who care about the written word, and for the most part we attribute any decline in sales to the encroachment of chain stores and Amazon shopping and not because people no longer care about reading.Ē
by
Gili Warsett

"Itís almost easy for a writer because New Jersey has some strong characteristics. Letís face it, there are nail salons in every state, but there really are a ton of nail and tanning salons in New Jersey and they do have the best names of any state. Itís just easy pickings! The easiest are the Sopranos clichťs, but if you move beyond that, thereís some texture there for sure."
by
Jeanne Sager